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A Right to Safer Schools

Two students were shot, one fatally, in D. C. schools in
January. After the murder of 16-year old Antar Hall at Cardozo High
School, a Post headline reported, “D.C. Leaders at a Loss for Ways
to Improve School Safety” [Metro, Jan. 7, 1995]. That concession
means that not only are children compelled to attend school until
age 18, they are forced to do so in danger of their lives.

In a recent Justice Department study, more than one in five male
high school students reported owning a gun. Locally, the number of
weapons confiscated in schools more than doubled in the past five
years. It is horrifying that school authorities can’t keep guns out
of school, but it is unconscionable that students are then forced
to spend six hours a day in such dangerous environments.

If Mayor Barry, the school board and the police cannot keep
children safe in school—and by their own testimony they
cannot—then we should give children the right to choose safer
schools by employing a new twist on the hottest idea in education
reform—school choice.

Under a classic school-choice plan, the state or city would take
some portion of the money it spends on schools and give it to the
parents of every student as a voucher to be presented at any
school, public or private, in the area. Money would flow from the
school board to the families to the schools chosen by individual
parents.

The general argument for school choice is that many American
schools aren’t working and that competitive systems work better
than government monopolies. Let parents—not just rich parents but
all parents—choose the schools their children attend, and several
things would happen:

Parents would take more interest in finding out which schools
would be best for their children.

More children would be able to attend private schools, which
consistently demonstrate better results than public schools.

New schools would be created in response to the increased
demand for educational alternatives.

Ideally, public schools would improve in order to keep or
attract families that had other options.

School-choice proposals have been bitterly resisted by the
educational establishment. School superintendents and teachers’
unions seem convinced that giving parents a choice about where to
send their children will mean a mass outflow of students from the
public schools.

But in Milwaukee, an alliance between state legislator Polly
Williams and Gov. Tommy Thompson managed to get a small choice
program implemented three years ago. The educational establishment
fought it in the courts, but several hundred poor Milwaukee
children now attend private schools on government-financed
scholarships. Their parents universally report that they’re
satisfied with the new schools and would not want to return their
children to the public schools.

The epidemic of violence in big-city schools provides an urgent
reason to give poor and inner-city families an opportunity to
escape dangerous schools. The D.C. school board should declare an
educational emergency and offer a voucher good in any private or
public school in the District to every student who is assigned to a
school that has had a shooting or stabbing or more than one weapon
confiscation in the past year, whether on school property or on
school buses.

In the 1991-1992 school year, the District spent $9,549 per
student, more than any state spent and the highest amount spent by
any of the country’s 40 largest school districts. For that money,
taxpayers got a high school graduation rate of 56 percent.
Disadvantaged urban students in 38 states and the District
participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress
tests; in 1992 D.C. students made the lowest scores.

For $9,000, students from Cardozo and other dangerous schools
could get a better education in a safer environment at Catholic or
independent schools in the District. Tuition at Archbishop Carroll
High School, for example, is only $3,850 a year, while Gonzaga
charges $7,100. For elementary school, a voucher worth only half
what the public schools spend would get students in to a number of
safer and better schools.

No child should be forced to attend a dangerous school. Let’s
give students at such schools an alternative.